Increasingly, hospitals, clinics and the like are providing a disposable sheath to mouth and rectal thermometers that are used with patients. Typically, the thermometer itself is sterilized with alcohol between uses, but such a disposable sheath provides added protection against the possible spread of disease between the patients by its use. Additionally, the sheath provides added protection to the patient should the thermometer be broken while inserted in the patient.
Various designs of packaged thermometer sheaths are currently commercially available to hospitals and clinics, with each sheath coming in a little flat package, often in strips of packaged sheaths with connecting backings which may be torn apart at perforations.
Typically, these packaged sheaths carry a flattened probe sheath between a backing web and an upper web. The webs may be peripherally sealed together at side areas. Some packages may be opened by grasping a pair of plastic tabs after thermometer insertion, each of which is sealed to an opposed side of the open end of the flattened probe sheath, and then pulling away the sheath from the package. Alternatively, some packaged sheaths are openable by tearing apart the outer backing and upper webs to expose the probe sheath, after a thermometer has been inserted into the probe sheath.
Hopkins et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,752,309 and Welin-Berger U.S. Pat. No. 3,215,265 each disclose a thermometer sheath package which comprises a flattened probe sheath positioned between an outer backing web and an upper web, peripherally sealed to serve as a package for the flattened probe sheath. However, in both the Hopkins et al. and Welin-Berger patents, certain difficulties are encountered in the insertion of the thermometer into the probe sheath, because when one grasps the lower tab attached to the lower surface of the flattened probe sheath to insert a thermometer, one almost inevitably grasps the lower backing web as well because of the length of the backing web. This can interfere with the sliding of the thermometer into the probe sheath, with wrinkles being formed in the probe sheath, since the grasping of the lower backing web along with the probe sheath can cause wrinkling of the probe sheath. Accordingly, users of sheath packages of the Hopkins et al. or Welin-Berger types often go to the trouble to fold the end of the backing web double, away from the mouth of the probe sheath, to fully expose the tabs for grasping prior to insertion of the thermometer. By the invention of this application, that inconvenient step is rendered unnecessary, providing an improvement in the utilization of the product of this invention.
Also, to remove the thermometer and sheath from the outer package, one has to fold the end of the backing web away in the Hopkins et al. and Welin-Berger patents in order to grasp both of the tabs that connect to the open mouth of the flattened sheath, prior to twisting the thermometer and sheath lose from the package. This procedure also is rendered more simple and expeditious by the structure of this invention, in that the need for the folding step of the backing web is eliminated.